bathlon sets a deadline and pushes fordelivery of the innovation which hashappened before,” says Knut Lechler,Össur’s other team leader. “The Cy-bathlon provided a platform to showwhat we have in the pipeline.”Lechler’s colleague David Langloisnoted that Cybathlon represents anew way for commercial providerssuch as Össur to market the real-world user benefits of their technolo-gies prior to being released or sold tothe public, rather than simply high-lighting clinical results or technicalspecifications. Says Langlois: “Youcan see Cybathlon as a reversal of theusual innovation competition frame-work, challenging the manufacturersand innovators to showcase their con-tribution to the users.”The structure of Cybathlon is alsounique in that both the pilots who con-trol the devices and the technology it-self are of equal importance.

“Pilots have to show that they cancomplete a task that is integral to dailylife,” Riener says. “The device needsthe pilot, because it needs someone tocontrol the device.”According to Riener, most of theteams are from universities and oth-er non-profit development groups,though about 25% were for-profit,commercial, or industrial groups.However, Riener says that the typesof solutions presented by the corpo-rate teams were generally simpler, butmore robust in nature.

“The companies want to develop
technology that can be commercialized quickly, and that’s why they develop solutions that can be considered to
be more practical,” Riener says.

On the other hand, many competitors at Cybathlon are academic researchers, such as NeuroCONCISE, a
non-profit group that has developed
wearable neurotechnology. NeuroCONCISE’s solution noninvasively measures and translates brain waves into
control signals that permit people to
communicate and interact with computers without moving. The group
took third place in the brain-computer interface race, and team leader
Damien Coyle noted the competitive
angle helped motivate and reinforce
the team’s belief that its work is on the
right track.

“This competition was going to re-ally test and raise the bar to see whatthe technology could achieve,” Coylesays. “It also raised awareness amongthe public about the technologies thatare out there, and put us all under pres-sure” to make sure the work they aredoing is viable.

Another team that competed at Cybathlon came from the Florida-based
Institute for Human and Machine
Cognition, or IHMC, which has been
working on an exoskeleton using
torque-controlled actuators and powered joints to help people who have
been paralyzed, or who have lost a
limb. The group competed and earned
a silver medal in the powered exoskeleton race, in which the pilot needed to
complete six tasks that are common to
everyday living.

Team leader Peter Neuhaus said
care was taken by the organizers to
make sure the tasks would be challenging, yet not so difficult to complete as to be unreasonable. Significant attention was paid to ensuring
the tasks were as closely related to real-world scenarios as possible, which
meant all technology designs needed to be practically focused, rather
than focused on abstract concepts or
movements. Indeed, the tasks in the
exoskeleton race—getting up from
a sofa, walking around obstacles,
walking up a ramp to open and walk
through a door, walking over stepping stones, walking over an uneven
floor, and walking up and down
stairs—are tasks likely to be encountered on a regular basis by people
with impaired mobility.

“Our research group has been inother types of competitions before,”Neuhaus says. “The challenge withcompetitions is to ensure that the solu-tion to the task advances the researchfield. The solutions developed for Cy-bathlon use advances that carry on be-yond the competition, and can operatein the real world.”All told, the significant amount ofattention paid to Cybathlon—morethan 4,600 spectators attended in per-son, and international media cover-age of the event was strong—helpedraise awareness of the research be-ing done in universities and amongfor-profit companies. Participating inCybathlon is “something you can tellpeople about,” Coyle says. “It’s quitea unique thing, and it opened up fur-ther avenues for where the technologycould go.”Cybathlon is also helpful in elimi-nating some of the silos that often oc-cur in research and commercial devel-opment labs.

“A competition like Cybathlon pro-vides a great insight on what is thecurrent thinking about real-life chal-lenges associated with disabilities,”Langlois says. “Furthermore, sincethere is always a lot of ways to solvethese problems and there is no booktelling you how to resolve it, a friendlycompetition between innovators andengineers is always a good way tostimulate creative minds and driveout technology.”According to participants, therearen’t any similar events being pro-duced, either in the U.S. or aroundthe world, that aren’t affiliated withRiener’s group; Cybathlon’s close tieswith researchers and corporate en-tities involved in bionic prostheticsand brain research likely has consoli-dated support around the Cybathlonbrand and event. Riener says smallerregional events that license the Cyba-thlon name may be launched aroundthe world over the next four years, andanother major event is slated to takeplace in Zurich again in 2020.

Interest remains high, as current
assistive technology is not yet satisfactory, according to Riener. “The wheelchairs are still too bulky, and can’t go
over uneven terrain,” he says. “The
commercially available prosthetic
devices are still not powered, which
makes it very challenging to climb
stairs or walk up ramps.”